The Sound of Salzburg

If there's one thing in this world that I love more than Julie Andrews, it's a soft pretzel. Put the two together and BOOM - you have Salzburg. 

Julie Andrews. Soft Pretzels. I mean, if that doesn’t make you want to get on a plane to Salzburg and never come home I don’t know what else to say.

Well, actually, that’s a lie. I have quite a bit to say about this little Austrian city and the absolute wonder oozing from every corner.

So, let’s start from the very beginning. A very good place to start.

Before I even got to Salzburg it held a pretty special place in my heart. You see, my childhood revolved around The Sound of Music. In fact, for a solid decade the VCR player played little else. My Barbies were named Maria and Captain von Trapp. My tenth birthday present? Julie Andrew’s biography. I’ll leave you to guess my most played album in my iTunes library. So naturally, coming to Salzburg was like stepping foot in the Holy Land. It. Was. Life changing.

It took precisely 3 seconds before I was hooked on this city. I’d wake up in the mornings with a smile plastered to my face, meander about the cobbled streets for hours on end, hike up around the surrounding hills (which, can I say, truly are alive), shop from the local farmers’ markets, find the best soft pretzel in town (trust me when I say I’ve tried them all), catch the sunset from the castle, and make it back in time for the 8pm daily screening of The Sound of Music in the hostel movie room. If there’s a time in my life where I can look back and say I’d peaked, it was then.

My favourite memory of my many weeks spent in Salzburg goes to a bike tour I did that took me and an equally crazy bunch of tourists all over the place to the filming locations of The Sound of Music. We zipped here, there and everywhere, singing the entire way, snapping up photos of gazebos and manor houses and statues and nunneries. It’s quite possibly the closest I’ve ever come to weeing my pants in excitement.

Anyways, there’s no point me telling you how beautiful place this is. No words could ever do it justice. Instead, I’ll plaster this post with photos of undoubtedly the most gorgeous city in central Europe. Salzburg – you are most definitely one of my favourite things.